Right Hand Positioning.

[zbalz]

I cant seem to find a great position for resting my right hand while picking. When I am doing my finger excersises, I normally dont rest my hand. I know this is a bad habit (because it can strain my wrist) so I want to stop while Im ahead. Any tips or ideas on a good way to rest my hand without muffling the strings

Thanks

-Zbalz

PS I've seen stonedragons suggestion in lesson 1 but I dont really understand how he does that when going from one string to another.

[StoneDragon]

I've never heard of anybody straining their wrist because they didn't anchor their hand. Anchoring the hand is a matter of accuracy at high picking speeds, muting unused strings at high volume (especially when using any type of overdrive or distortion) and for some a way to hold way too much tension in the right arm.

If you watch some of those jazz guys, you will see that they don't anchor the picking hand at all and play some incredibly fast and intricate lines. It's a matter of proper muscle developement in the wrist. The only rock guy that I can think of who doesn't anchor their picking hand is Vinnie Moore. If anybody is a candidate for wrist strain it would be him.... what a monster.

As I stated before, rock players need to mute unused strings to keep them from ringing due to high volume levels and/or distortion. One way to do that is to rest the "karate chop" portion of your picking hand on the E and A strings.

Everybody has their own approach to picking, so I can only tell you what I do.

First off, I don't "anchor" my picking hand. I lighly rest the hand on the strings. My "anchor is my forearm on the guitar body. My forearm anchor is also mobile, as you will see in a moment.

Take a look at this picture (http://www.zentao.com/guitar/lesson1/handson.jpg), so you will have a reference for what I am talking about here.

I almost always (99.999999% of the time) mute the E and A strings when I am playing single note runs on those strings. (see my lesson on right-hand muting (http://www.zentao.com/guitar/lesson3/right-hand.html)) Since I generally play with tons-o-distortion, muting the lower strings helps to give the notes on those strings more clarity and definition.

So, lets say that I am playing a scale across all six strings.

My hand will start out resting on the E and A strings close to the bridge in order to mute those two strings just enough to get the notes to clear up.

As I move to each higher string, rather than bend the wrist to reach those strings, I move my foerarm in. Since my forearm is at a 45 degree angle to the strings, when I get to the D and G strings I am picking pretty much right over the top of the middle pickup on my strat. When I get to the B and E strings (as you can see in the photo) I am picking all the way up by the neck pickup.

This method of moving my forearm in instead of bending my wrist at a sharper angle does three things for me.

First, it keeps my wrist straight so I have optimum use of my wrist muscles, which allows me to keep my picking hand and arm very relaxed. Tension in the hand and arm is death to speed, accuracy and tone.

Second, as I work my way up the strings, the 45 movement of my wrist allows me to find the "sweet" spot on each string. My main guitar has only one pickup, so in order to get more tonal variety I found myself moving my picking hand to different places along the string. This eventually developed into an instinctual "feel" for where to pick each string to get the notes to really "sing" and where the pick squeals come out best.

Third, By moving my forearm in, I am able to rest the hand on any strings that are below the string I am playing, which keeps those strings from ringing.

Sometimes (like in the photo) I will rest the tips of my middle, ring and pinky fingers on the face of the guitar (just like OmniAxiS descibes in this thread (http://www.zentao.com/ubb/Forum2/HTML/000123.html)), other times I will curl those fingers as if I'm holding a broomstick in my hand. I haven't figured out any rhymn or reason why I do one or the other though.

Keep in mind that this is only for playing single note lines. When it comes to playing chords and different rhythm type stuff, my technique will change depending on the situation and he sounds I need to get.